Essex Books Presents Shelf Awareness for Readers: Fame Edition

Like a Moth to Fame

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
--from Emily Dickinson's "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?"

Plenty of spotlight-seekers would disagree with Emily Dickinson about the dreary nature of fame, including real-life British magician Adelaide Herrmann and a fictional hippo named Veronica. But there's one talented bear pianist who discovers his friends are "the most important audience of all."

Addie Herrmann (1853-1932) of London "never wanted to be ordinary," she wanted to "astonish, shock and dazzle." Mara Rockliff and illustrator Iacopo Bruno's Anything but Ordinary Addie (Candlewick, ages 6-9) is a big, bold picture-book biography as dazzling as its long-forgotten subject, the "Queen of Magic" who spent 65 years as a performing magician and whose extraordinary illusions were admired by thousands, including Harry Houdini.

Veronica is one hippopotamus among many in her mud bank. She is, to her dismay, inconspicuous. Seeking the attention she craves, she walks all the way to the city, where, sure enough, she was "gloriously conspicuous." In fact, "she was very much in the way." Caldecott Medal winner Roger Duvoisin's 1962 classic, Veronica (Bodleian Library; ages 5-8), is a fun picture book about some bad news (Veronica is jailed for wreaking conspicuous havoc) and some good news (she has a great story to tell back home that makes her a stand-out after all).

In British author-illustrator David Litchfield's gorgeous debut picture book, The Bear and the Piano (Clarion; ages 4-7), a bear cub finds a piano in the sun-dappled forest one day: "PLONK! The strange thing made an awful sound." Over the years, the bear becomes a talented player and takes his "magical melodies" to the bright lights of the city, which is truly wonderful until he begins to miss his forest friends. Happy ending: they're waiting for him with open arms.

Written by Karin Snelson, freelance writer and editor